Poetry is a matter of heart and soul
with leftovers of the mind.

When engaging with poetry, unconsciously, people are searching for the keys that will open something within them.
They are hoping to find unspoken wisdom of a soul, a melody of a heart and a struggle of a mind that defies all.

While reading written lines, souls are reaching for souls, a mirroring of their own hue, recognition, and acceptance of themselves as they are — 
troubled and imperfect trying to match the expectations of a perfect world.

Poetry is every word that shakes your heart and mind, makes you feel as if those words were ripped from your own soul. It knows no boundaries, 
it’s free from the shackles that people are trying to put upon it. 
It’s the wind of a spirit, river of the heart, and ether of the soul. 
It’s to be felt, and not read, inhaled not devoured, it’s provoking and unsteady, peaceful, and tender.

Poetry is what you need it to be, not what you want it to be.

Coming out of one’s pen it has its own will and rules. Often, it comes as a surprise to the writer for it’s not what he or she wanted to craft. Poetry has a way of reaching higher and cutting deeper through all the layers of deception one is trying to shield oneself with.

If crafted while withholding the heart, poetry will bear no fruit, like planting a seed and depriving it of sunlight. Lines watered with honest and raw sensations poured out in an exhale of a soul, are the ones that scream the truth of the world that we’re all carrying within us, but not all allow it to be felt.

Poetry is not about others, not about the readers, it’s about you.

It’s personal and revealing, it’s a weakness and a strength. It’s a choice as much as it is not, putting up or bringing down the pillars of faith and hope.
Sun doesn’t shine all the time, nor rain has unending fall, duality lies in everything that we know, and even beyond — in the realms of the heart and soul.

The legacy of ages within our being is the vastness of love, faith, hope, pain, sadness, and despair. To deny any of them is a sacrilege upon ourselves, for combined they make us who we are. 

Poetry is a song of a legacy we did not choose, a marble streaked with the light and darkness of our hue.

Poetry can be mastered as much as one’s own heart.

~.~

The weaving of my heart
I will give,
putting myself
before thy knees.

But will you see it,
will you sense the shades
reaching out 
to touch you?

It’s not for all,
perhaps not even for you,
to feel the shades 
of my hue.

                                   ~ Iva

~.~

This contemplation about poetry was published on Medium in October 2021. 
I wanted to share it here as my first blog post because I feel poetry, as much as any other art, is constantly being pushed into frames in order to be studied so it can be valued as some people see fit.

Poetry is not about form, rhyme, or anything that can be measured, it’s about wording a sensation or a thought one wants to share, and touching the reader.

What is great writing to you, may be bad writing to me.
We are all tuned differently to take in the vibes of the world, and I feel that needs to be respected. 
We all love different things, we all have different tastes. Some prefer wine over bear, fruit cake over a chocolate one. Dose that mean wine and fruit cake are better then bear and chocolate cake?

There is an old Latin saying – De gustibus non est disputandum / In matters of taste, there can be no disputes.

Unfortunately, today everyone takes the right to have an opinion about everything while failing to look themselves in a mirror.

To make long story short, poetry you don’t “read” poetry you feel.

~ Iva 

_________________

All the worded thoughts are mine if not noted differently